Futurehttp://www.businessinsider.com/category/future
en-usTue, 03 Mar 2015 19:49:22 -0500Tue, 03 Mar 2015 19:49:22 -0500The latest news on Future from Business Insiderhttp://static3.businessinsider.com/assets/images/bilogo-250x36-wide-rev.pngBusiness Insiderhttp://www.businessinsider.com
http://www.businessinsider.com/scientists-have-built-a-computer-that-can-beat-you-at-classic-atari-games-2015-3Scientists built a computer that can beat you at classic Atari gameshttp://www.businessinsider.com/scientists-have-built-a-computer-that-can-beat-you-at-classic-atari-games-2015-3
Tue, 03 Mar 2015 19:13:21 -0500Tanya Lewis
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/54f62e9deab8eaac74a51ec2-575-431/google-deepmind-artificial-intelligence-ai.jpg" border="0" alt="Google DeepMind Artificial intelligence AI"></p><p>Computers have already beaten humans at chess and "Jeopardy!," and now they can add one more feather to their caps: the ability to best humans in several classic arcade games.</p>
<p>A team of scientists at Google created an artificially intelligent computer program that can teach itself to play Atari 2600 video games, using only minimal background information to learn how to play.</p>
<p>By mimicking some principles of the human brain, the program is able to play at the same level as a professional human gamer, or better, on most of the games, researchers reported today (Feb. 25) in the journal Nature.</p>
<p>This is the first time anyone has built an artificial intelligence (AI) system that can learn to excel at a wide range of tasks, study co-author Demis Hassabis, an AI researcher at Google DeepMind in London, said at a news conference yesterday.</p>
<p>Future versions of this AI program could be used in more general decision-making applications, from driverless cars to weather prediction, Hassabis said.</p>
<h2><strong>Learning by reinforcement</strong></h2>
<p>Humans and other animals learn by reinforcement — engaging in behaviors that maximize some reward. For example, pleasurable experiences cause the brain to release the chemical neurotransmitter dopamine.</p>
<p>But in order to learn in a complex world, the brain has to interpret input from the senses and use these signals to generalize past experiences and apply them to new situations.</p>
<p>When IBM's Deep Blue computer defeated chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov in 1997, and the artificially intelligent Watson computer won the quiz show "Jeopardy!" in 2011, these were considered impressive technical feats, but they were mostly preprogrammed abilities, Hassabis said.</p>
<p><img class="full" src="http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/52e02db5ecad04f60352c53c-1200-800/rtxhjdk.jpg" border="0" alt="garry kasparov deep blue ibm chess">In contrast, the new DeepMind AI is capable of learning on its own, using reinforcement.</p>
<p>To develop the new AI program, Hassabis and his colleagues created an artificial neural network based on "deep learning," a machine-learning algorithm that builds progressively more abstract representations of raw data. (Google famously used deep learning to train a network of computers to recognize cats based on millions of YouTube videos, but this type of algorithm is actually involved in many Google products, from search to translation.)</p>
<p>The new AI program is called the "deep Q-network," or DQN, and it runs on a regular desktop computer.</p>
<h2><strong>Playing games</strong></h2>
<p>The researchers tested DQN on 49 classic Atari 2600 games, such as "Pong" and "Space Invaders." The only pieces of information about the game that the program received were the pixels on the screen and the game score.</p>
<script height="352px" width="540px" src="http://player.ooyala.com/iframe.js#pbid=59b4de92e6b44145b5b692f41dd00d0a&amp;ec=FhZHRsczoFw_M6woqdFvX1raUrDngaHU" type="text/javascript"></script>
<p>"The system learns to play by essentially pressing keys randomly" in order to achieve a high score, study co-author Volodymyr Mnih, also a research scientist at Google DeepMind, said at the news conference.</p>
<p>After a couple weeks of training, DQN performed as well as professional human gamers on many of the games, which ranged from side-scrolling shooters to 3D car-racing games, the researchers said. The AI program scored 75 percent of the human score on more than half of the games, they added.</p>
<p>Sometimes, DQN discovered game strategies that the researchers hadn't even thought of — for example, in the game "Seaquest," the player controls a submarine and must avoid, collect or destroy objects at different depths.</p>
<p>The AI program discovered it could stay alive by simply keeping the submarine just below the surface, the researchers said.</p>
<h2><strong>More complex tasks</strong></h2>
<p>DQN also made use of another feature of <a href="http://www.livescience.com/29365-human-brain.html">human brains</a>: the ability to remember past experiences and replay them in order to guide actions (a process that occurs in a seahorse-shaped brain region called the hippocampus).</p>
<p>Similarly, DQN stored "memories" from its experiences, and fed these back into its decision-making process during gameplay.</p>
<p><img class="full" src="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/4fdf6e9669bedd5041000006-1200-750/atari-vcs.jpg" border="0" alt="atari">But human brains don't remember all experiences the same way. They're biased to remember more emotionally charged events, which are likely to be more important.</p>
<p>Future versions of DQN should incorporate this kind of biased memory, the researchers said.</p>
<p>Now that their program has mastered Atari games, the scientists are starting to test it on more complex games from the '90s, such as 3D racing games. "Ultimately, if this algorithm can race a car in racing games, with a few extra tweaks, it should be able to drive a real car," Hassabis said.</p>
<p>In addition, future versions of the AI program might be able to do things such as plan a trip to Europe, booking all the flights and hotels. But "we're most excited about using AI to help us do science," Hassabis said.</p>
<p><em>Follow Tanya Lewis on <a href="https://twitter.com/tanyalewis314">Twitter</a>. Follow us <a href="https://twitter.com/LiveScience">@livescience</a>, <a href="http://www.facebook.com/#!/livescience">Facebook</a> &amp; <a href="https://plus.google.com/101164570444913213957/posts">Google+</a>. Original article on <a href="http://www.livescience.com/49947-google-ai-plays-videogames.html">Live Science</a>.</em></p>
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<p><em>Copyright 2015 <a href="http://www.livescience.com/">LiveScience</a>, a Purch company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.</em></p><p><strong>SEE ALSO:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/why-you-shouldnt-be-afraid-of-ai-2015-1" >Afraid Of AI? Here's Why You Shouldn't Be</a></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/scientists-have-built-a-computer-that-can-beat-you-at-classic-atari-games-2015-3#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> <p>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/best-1980s-video-games-2014-2">11 Video Games From The 1980s That Are Better Than Games Today</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/this-could-be-the-future-of-airliners-2015-3This incredibly futuristic plane could be the future of airlinershttp://www.businessinsider.com/this-could-be-the-future-of-airliners-2015-3
Tue, 03 Mar 2015 12:09:27 -0500Dennis Green
<p><img src="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/54f4c52b69bedd1643e84a71-1319-989/27-65.jpg" border="0" alt="Progress Eagle" style="color: #000000;"></p><p></p>
<p>Designer Oscar Viñals <a href="http://www.designboom.com/design/jet-awwa-progress-eagle-concept-02-27-2015/">has envisioned the future.</a> And the future is the Progress Eagle rendering.</p>
<p>It's a triple-decked, eco-friendly, hybrid jet airliner that would its 800 seats into the air with six hydrogen fuel engines and keep them there with its rear electric wind generators for sustained flight.</p>
<p><img src="http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/54f4c52c6bb3f7276394bcd7-1840-1380/21-142.jpg" border="0" alt="Progress Eagle" style="color: #000000;">Solar panels on the roof of the plane would absorb solar energy and clever engineering would reduce drag as well as the sound of the plane flying through the air by 75%, according to Viñals. Materials like c<span style="line-height: 1.5em;">arbon fiber,</span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> graphene, ceramic, aluminum, titanium, and a shape-memory alloy would increase efficiency by making the plane lighter.</span></p>
<p><span>The Eagle would be larger than even the largest planes today. Its wingspan measures an impressive 315 feet, besting even the </span>largest wingspan flying today — the Airbus A380's 262 feet wingspan. Fortunately, the Eagle's slim-yet-ginormous wings would fold up for taxi and storage.</p>
<p><img src="http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/54f4c52becad04197e7c8820-1559-1169/35-43.jpg" border="0" alt="Progress Eagle" style="line-height: 1.5em;"></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">But the adjustments to your flying experience don't end there. The plane would also makes room for a new class of cabin, "pilot's class." This seating class would faces right out the front window of the plane for a spectacular(ly terrifying) view.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The Eagle is a futuristic airliner design — so futuristic that the technology for all of its advancements hasn't even been invented yet — and likely wouldn't be feasible until at least the middle of the century.</span></p>
<p>Check out more renderings of the concept below.</p>
<p><img src="http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/54f4c52deab8ea7e0f6d991c-1840-1380/2-664.jpg" border="0" alt="Progress Eagle" style="line-height: 1.5em;"><img src="http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/54f4c52beab8ea9f0e6d991a-1417-1063/9airport.jpg" border="0" alt="Progress Eagle" style="line-height: 1.5em;"><img src="http://static5.businessinsider.com/image/54f4c52c6da811a40f1805b7-1569-1177/blue-15.jpg" border="0" alt="Progress Eagle" style="line-height: 1.5em;"></p>
<p><img src="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/54f4c52a6bb3f7f06394bcd8-1323-992/3-479.jpg" border="0" alt="Progress Eagle" style="line-height: 1.5em;"></p>
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<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/this-could-be-the-future-of-airliners-2015-3#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> <p>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/etihad-airways-new-luxury-planes-2014-12">These New Luxury Planes Feature $20,000 'Mini Apartments' With A Private Bathroom And A Butler</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/stephen-hawking-thinks-these-3-things-have-the-potential-to-destroy-humanity-2015-3Stephen Hawking thinks these 3 things have the potential to destroy humanityhttp://www.businessinsider.com/stephen-hawking-thinks-these-3-things-have-the-potential-to-destroy-humanity-2015-3
Tue, 03 Mar 2015 09:40:00 -0500Tanya Lewis
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/53ecceb9eab8eacf1c985f8c-1200-1334/13774836353_a5ac248890_h.jpg" border="0" alt="stephen hawking"></p><p>Stephen Hawking may be most famous for his work on black holes and gravitational singularities, but the world-renowned physicist has also become known for his outspoken ideas about things that could destroy human civilization.</p>
<p>Hawking <a href="http://www.livescience.com/48582-theory-of-everything-hawking-als.html">suffers from a motor neuron disease</a> similar to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, which left him paralyzed and unable to speak without a voice synthesizer. But that has not stopped the University of Cambridge professor from making proclamations about the wide range of dangers humanity faces — including ourselves.</p>
<p>Here are a few things Hawking has said could bring about the demise of human civilization. [<a href="http://www.livescience.com/14173-doomsday-scenarios-apocalypse-2012.html">End of the World? Top Doomsday Fears</a>]</p>
<h2>Artificial intelligence</h2>
<p>Hawking is part of a small but growing group of scientists who have expressed <a href="http://www.livescience.com/48972-stephen-hawking-artificial-intelligence-threat.html">concerns about "strong" artificial intelligence</a> (AI) — intelligence that could equal or exceed that of a human.</p>
<p>"The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race," Hawking told the BBC in December 2014. The statement was in response to a question about a new AI voice-synthesizing system that Hawking has been using.</p>
<p>Hawking's warnings echo those of billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX and Tesla Motors, who has called AI humanity's "<a href="http://www.livescience.com/48481-elon-musk-artificial-intelligence-threat.html">biggest existential threat</a>." Last month, Hawking, Musk, and dozens of other scientific bigwigs signed an open letter describing the risks, as well as the benefits, of AI.</p>
<p>"Because of the great potential of AI, it is important to research how to reap its benefits while avoiding potential pitfalls," the scientists <a href="http://www.livescience.com/49419-artificial-intelligence-dangers-letter.html">wrote in the letter</a>, which was published online January 11 by the Future of Life Institute, a volunteer organization that aims to mitigate existential threats to humanity.</p>
<p>But many AI researchers say humanity is nowhere near being able to develop strong AI.</p>
<p>"We are decades away from any technology we need to worry about," Demis Hassabis, an artificial intelligence researcher at Google DeepMind, told reporters this week at a news conference about a new AI program he developed that can teach itself to play computer games. Still, "It's good to start the conversation now," he added.</p>
<h2>Human aggression</h2>
<p>If our machines don't kill us, we might kill ourselves. Hawking now believes&nbsp;<a href="http://www.livescience.com/49906-hawking-human-aggression-warning.html">human aggression might destroy civilization</a>.</p>
<p>The physicist was giving a tour of the London Science Museum to Adaeze Uyanwah, a 24-year-old teacher from California who won a contest from VisitLondon.com. When Uyanwah asked, "What human shortcomings would you most like to alter?" Hawking responded:</p>
<p>"The human failing I would most like to correct is aggression. It may have had survival advantage in caveman days, to get more food, territory or partner with whom to reproduce, but now it threatens to destroy us all," <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/stephen-hawking-aggression-could-destroy-us-10057658.html">The Independent</a> reported.</p>
<p>For example, a major nuclear war would most likely end civilization and could wipe out the human race, Hawking added. When asked which human quality he would most like to magnify, Hawking chose empathy, because "it brings us together in a peaceful, loving state."</p>
<p>Hawking thinks space exploration will be important to ensuring the survival of humanity. "I believe that the long-term future of the human race must be space, and that it represents an important life insurance for our future survival, as it could prevent the disappearance of humanity by colonizing other planets," <a href="http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/Future-human-race-depends-space-travel-says/story-26054730-detail/story.html">Cambridge News</a>&nbsp;reported.</p>
<h2>Alien life</h2>
<p>But Hawking had made ominous warnings even before these recent ones. Back in 2010, Hawking said that if intelligent alien life exists, it <a href="http://www.space.com/8288-aliens-exist-stephen-hawking.html">may not be that friendly</a> toward humans.</p>
<p>"If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn't turn out very well for the Native Americans," Hawking said during an episode of "Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking," a show hosted by the Discovery Channel, <a href="http://www.cnet.com/news/stephen-hawking-aliens-might-hate-us/">reported The Times</a>, a UK-based newspaper.</p>
<p>Advanced alien civilizations might become nomads, looking to conquer and colonize whatever planets they could reach, Hawking said. "If so, it makes sense for them to exploit each new planet for material to build more spaceships so they could move on. Who knows what the limits would be?"</p>
<p>From the threat of nefarious AI, to advanced aliens, to hostile humans, Hawking's outlook for humanity is looking pretty grim.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><em>Follow Tanya Lewis on <a href="https://twitter.com/tanyalewis314">Twitter</a>. Follow us <a href="https://twitter.com/LiveScience">@livescience</a>, <a href="http://www.facebook.com/#!/livescience">Facebook</a> &amp; <a href="https://plus.google.com/101164570444913213957/posts">Google+</a>. Original article on <a href="http://www.livescience.com/49952-stephen-hawking-warnings-to-humanity.html">Live Science</a>.</em></p>
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<p><em>Copyright 2015 <a href="http://www.livescience.com/">LiveScience</a>, a Purch company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.</em></p><p><strong>READ MORE:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/neil-degrasse-tysons-favorite-einstein-equation-2015-3" >You'll never guess what Neil deGrasse Tyson's favorite equation of Einstein's is</a></strong></p>
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Tue, 17 Feb 2015 18:32:00 -0500Caleb A. Scharf
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/54e3ccfbeab8ea8b5cceaf75-600-/163133206.jpg" border="0" alt="artificial intelligence robot" width="600"></p><p>Somewhere in the long list of topics that are relevant to astrobiology is the question of 'intelligence'.</p>
<p>Is human-like, technological intelligence likely to be common across the universe?</p>
<p>Are we merely an evolutionary blip, our intelligence consigning us to a dead-end in the fossil record?</p>
<p>Or is intelligence something that the entropy-driven, complexity-producing, universe is inevitably going to converge on?</p>
<p>All good questions. An equally good question is whether we can replicate our own intelligence, or something similar, and whether or not that's actually a good idea.</p>
<p>In recent months, once again, this topic has made it to the mass media. First there was Stephen Hawking, then Elon Musk, and most recently Bill Gates. All of these smart people have suggested that artificial intelligence (AI) is something to be watched carefully, lest it develops to a point of existential threat.</p>
<p>Except it's a little hard to find any details of what exactly that existential threat is perceived to be. Hawking has suggested that it might be the capacity of a strong AI to 'evolve' much, much faster than biological systems – ultimately gobbling up resources without a care for the likes of us. I think this is a fair conjecture. AI's threat is not that it will be a sadistic megalomaniac (unless we deliberately, or carelessly make it that way) but that it will follow its own evolutionary imperative.</p>
<p>It's tempting to suggest that a safeguard would be to build empathy into an AI. But I think that fails in two ways. First, most humans have the capacity for empathy, yet we continue to be nasty, brutish, and brutal to ourselves and to pretty much every other living thing on the planet. The second failure point is that it's not clear to me that true, strong, AI is something that we can engineer in a pure step-by-step way, we may need to allow it to come into being on its own.</p>
<p>What does that mean? Current efforts in areas such as computational '<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_learning">deep-learning</a>' involve algorithms constructing their own probabilistic landscapes for sifting through vast amounts of information. The software is not necessarily hard-wired to 'know' the rules ahead of time, but rather to find the rules or to be amenable to being guided to the rules – for example in natural language processing. It's incredible stuff, but it's not clear that it is a path to AI that has equivalency to the way humans, or any sentient organisms, think. This has been<a href="http://www.tor.com/blogs/2011/06/norvig-vs-chomsky-and-the-fight-for-the-future-of-ai">&nbsp;hotly debated</a>&nbsp;by the likes of&nbsp;<a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/11/noam-chomsky-on-where-artificial-intelligence-went-wrong/261637/?single_page=true">Noam Chomsky</a>(on the side of skepticism) and&nbsp;<a href="http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/is-deep-learning-a-revolution-in-artificial-intelligence">Peter Norvig</a>&nbsp;(on the side of enthusiasm). At a deep level it is a face-off between science focused on underlying simplicity, and science that says nature may not swing that way at all.</p>
<p>An alternative route to AI is one that I'll propose here (and it's not original). Perhaps the general conditions can be created&nbsp;<em>from which intelligence can emerge</em>. On the face of it this seems fairly ludicrous, like throwing a bunch of spare parts in a box and hoping for a new bicycle to appear. It's certainly not a way to treat AI as a scientific study. But&nbsp;<em>if&nbsp;</em>intelligence is the emergent – evolutionary – property of the right sort of very, very complex systems, could it happen? Perhaps.</p>
<p>One engineering challenge is that it may take a system of the complexity of a human brain to sustain intelligence, but of course our brains co-evolved with our intelligence. So it's a bit silly to imagine that you could sit down and design the perfect circumstances for a new type of intelligence to appear, because we don't know exactly what those circumstances should be.</p>
<p>Except perhaps we are indeed setting up these conditions right now. Machine learning may be a just piece of the behavioral puzzle of AI, but what happens when it lives among the sprawl of the internet? The troves of big and small data, the apps, the algorithms that control data packet transport, the sensors – from GPS to thermostats and traffic monitors – the myriad pieces that talk to each other directly or indirectly.</p>
<p>This is an enormous construction site. Estimates suggest that i<a href="http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/solutions/collateral/service-provider/visual-networking-index-vni/white_paper_c11-520862.html">n 2014</a>&nbsp;some 7.4 billion mobile devices were online. In terms of&nbsp;<em>anything</em>&nbsp;that can be online – the internet of 'things' (from&nbsp;<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ILoo">toilets</a>&nbsp;to factories) -&nbsp; the present estimate is that there are about 15 billion active internet connections today (via a&nbsp;<a href="http://blogs.cisco.com/news/cisco-connections-counter">lovely service by Cisco</a>). By 2020 there could be 50 billion.</p>
<p>If this were a disorganized mush of stuff, like the spare parts in a box, I think one would have little hope for anything interesting to happen. But it's not a mush. It's increasingly populated by algorithms whose very purpose is to find structures and correlations in this ocean – by employing tricks that are in part inspired by biological intelligence, or at least our impression of it. Code talks to code, data packets zip around seeking optimal routes, software talks to hardware, hardware talks to hardware. Superimposed on this ecosystem are human minds, human decision processes nursing and nurturing the ebb and flow of information. And increasingly, our interactions are themselves driving deep changes in the data ocean as analytics seek to 'understand' what we might look for next, as individuals or as a population.</p>
<p>Could something akin to a&nbsp;<a href="http://www.alanturing.net/turing_archive/pages/reference%20articles/what_is_AI/What%20is%20AI13.html">strong AI</a>&nbsp;emerge from all of this? I don't know, and neither does anyone else. But it is a situation that has not existed before in 4 billion years of life on this planet, which brings us back to the question of an AI threat.</p>
<p><em>If</em>&nbsp;this is how a strong AI occurs, the most immediate danger will simply be that a vast swathe of humanity now relies on the ecosystem of the internet. It's not just how we communicate or find information, it's how our food supplies are organized, how our pharmacists track our medicines, how our planes, trains, trucks, and cargo ships are scheduled, how our financial systems work. A strong AI emerging here could wreak havoc in the way that a small child can rearrange your sock drawer or chew on the cat's tail.</p>
<p>As Hawking suggests, the 'evolution' of an AI could be rapid. In fact, it could emerge, evolve, and swamp the internet ecosystem in fractions of a second. That in turn raises an interesting possibility – would an emergent AI be so rapidly limited that it effectively stalls, unable to build the virtual connections and structures it needs for long term survival? While that might limit AI, it would be cold comfort for us.</p>
<p>I can't resist positing a connection to another hoary old problem – the&nbsp;<a href="http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/life-unbounded/2012/03/15/mass-effect-solves-the-fermi-paradox/">Fermi Paradox</a>. Perhaps the creation of AI is part of the&nbsp;<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter">Great Filter</a>&nbsp;that kills off civilizations, but it also self-terminates, which is why even AI has&nbsp;<a href="http://nautil.us/issue/101/in-our-nature/dont-write-off-et-quite-yet">apparently failed</a>&nbsp;to spread across the galaxy during the past 13 billion years…</p><p><strong>SEE ALSO:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/ray-kurzweil-thinks-well-have-human-level-ai-by-2029-2014-12" >KURZWEIL: Human-Level AI Is Coming By 2029</a></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-the-real-reason-we-should-be-worried-about-ai-2015-2#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> <p>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/end-fall-demise-mayan-civilization-new-evidence-2015-1">Scientists Discovered What Actually Wiped Out The Mayan Civilization</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/google-has-defended-its-experimental-lab-2015-2CRITICS BE DAMNED: Google says its moonshots do, in fact, make moneyhttp://www.businessinsider.com/google-has-defended-its-experimental-lab-2015-2
Tue, 17 Feb 2015 08:49:54 -0500Joshua Barrie
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/54e34733dd0895242d8b45f3-1200-924/astro-teller-head-of-the-google-x-lab-wearing-a-pair-of-google-glass-6.jpg" border="0" alt="astro teller head of the google x lab wearing a pair of google glass"></p><p>Astro Teller, the head of Google's experimental lab, Google X, <a href="http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/02/16/googles-captain-of-moonshots-on-making-profits-at-google-x/?_r=0">has told the New York Times </a>that the company's "moonshot" ventures do in fact make money.</p>
<p>Teller's statement ought to reassure <a href="http://moneyweek.com/google-driverless-cars-could-be-bad-for-investors/">investors who are worried that Google has been too distracted by its offbeat, out-there research projects</a>. (Increasing human longevity, medical contact lenses and driverless cars are the best-known ones but Google is also rumoured to have considered&nbsp;hover boards, space elevators, and teleportation.)</p>
<p>While those projects make great headlines, none of them have made money.</p>
<p><span></span><a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/google-ends-sales-of-google-glass-2015-1">Google Glass has been put on hold as a consumer product</a><span>. Project Loon, Google's attempt to create worldwide internet coverage from satellite balloons,&nbsp;</span><a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/googles-loon-balloons-keep-falling-out-of-the-sky-2014-11">has suffered some setbacks</a>&nbsp;(t<span>hey keep falling out of the sky).&nbsp;</span><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/google-driverless-cars-nevada-2011-6">The company's driverless cars look impressive</a><span>, but they're still years away from a production line.</span></p>
<p><a href="http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2015/02/16/when-will-google-projects-pay-off-wall-street-wonders/wlQms86XE67SCGSrR3CiVN/story.html?comments=all&amp;sort=OLDEST_CREATE_DT">The Boston Globe reports</a>&nbsp;that Google has spent billions on its Moonshot Factory. Analysts once estimated that Google Glass could fetch up to $11 billion in sales by 2018. Driverless cars, meanwhile, were predicted to be a not too-distant $200 billion revenue stream by a Piper Jeffray analyst Gene Munster.</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">In real life, Google's revenue-generating operations have stayed pretty much the same: it's a search tool to find other websites; its core is advertising revenue.</span></p>
<p>But <a href="http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/02/16/googles-captain-of-moonshots-on-making-profits-at-google-x/?_r=1">Teller says some of inventions <em>are</em> paying off</a> now:</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">It would be fair to say Google Brain (now called the Neural Network Project) is producing in value for Google something that would be comparable to the total costs of Google X — just that that one thing we’ve spun out.</p>
<p>The "Neural Network Project" is a simulation of the human brain comprising&nbsp;16,000 computer processors&nbsp;that can identify cats on YouTube, <a href="http://9to5google.com/2012/06/26/nyt-x-lab-googlers-built-a-brain-that-identifies-cats-in-youtube-videos/">9to5Google reported in 2012.</a>&nbsp;(Identifying something as random and varied as an image of a cat is actually an impressive task for a machine and it is regarded as a big step in the development of artificial intelligence.)</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Teller says "we owe it to Google to explore new problems for Google to have a hand in (solving) and new businesses for it to get into over time. Our time horizon is longer than most of the rest of the companies’ time horizon tends to be."</span></p>
<p class="story-body-text">Quite how long that time-frame is, though, remains unclear.</p><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/google-has-defended-its-experimental-lab-2015-2#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> <p>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/google-lift-lab-spoon-for-parkinsons-2014-11">Google Has Invented A Super Spoon To Help Parkinson's Patients</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/ultra-hd-4k-television-tech-2015-1Why Everyone Is So Excited About Ultra-HD TVhttp://www.businessinsider.com/ultra-hd-4k-television-tech-2015-1
Mon, 16 Feb 2015 13:33:00 -0500Justin Gmoser
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/ultra-hd-4k-television-tech-2015-1">Click here for the story &gt;</a></p><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/ultra-hd-4k-television-tech-2015-1#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/scientific-mysteries-we-could-solve-in-the-21st-century-2015-110 scientific mysteries we are set to solve this centuryhttp://www.businessinsider.com/scientific-mysteries-we-could-solve-in-the-21st-century-2015-1
Sat, 31 Jan 2015 08:12:00 -0500TOM SIEGFRIED
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/54cc0ca06bb3f7083002f89b-600-/espace_de_calabi-yau.png" border="0" alt="Espace de Calabi Yau.PNG" width="600"></p><p>The last few centuries have been pretty good for science.</p>
<p>In the 17th century, Isaac Newton solved the ancient controversy over the nature of forces and motion with his three laws.&nbsp;<span style="line-height: 1.5em;">In the 18th, Ben Franklin figured out a lot about electricity. In the 19th, Darwin explained the diversity of species, Maxwell revealed the physics of light, Mendeleyev defined the families of chemical elements. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">In the 20th we had Einstein, who figured out all sorts of stuff, including gravity. No to mention Watson and Crick, who deciphered the molecular foundation for genetics and life. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">What more do you want?</span></p>
<p>Well, there are still lots of mysteries left for the 21st century to solve, and it has only 86 years left in which to solve them. So it’s a good idea to put them in a list, just to avoid any danger that everybody will forget to work on them.</p>
<p>Actually there are many more than 10, so this list will have to be restricted to my favorites. To select from all the many possibilities, let’s make a game of it.</p>
<h4>10. How did life originate?</h4>
<p>It doesn’t seem like this one should be so hard, but it continues to defy solution. There’s plenty of speculation, often related to RNA’s ability to act both as catalyst and bio–hard drive to store information. And new findings turn up all the time about how life’s basic building blocks could have been generated in primordial conditions or delivered to Earth from space.</p>
<p>I think this question will end up having something to do with game theory, as biomolecules&nbsp;<a href="http://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlepdf/2014/mb/c3mb70601j" target="_blank">interact in competitive ways</a>&nbsp;that could be described as strategies, and the math for calculating optimal strategies is what&nbsp;<a href="http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/general/whatis.htm" target="_blank">game theory</a>&nbsp;is all about.</p>
<h4>9. What is the identity of the dark matter?</h4>
<p>It has been eight decades or so since astronomers began to notice that there is more gravity pulling stuff around out in space than there is visible matter able to produce such effects. Attempts to detect the supposedly exotic (as in, unknown) species of subatomic particle responsible for the extra gravity have been frustrating.</p>
<p>Hints seen in some experiments have been ruled out by other experiments. I think there’s a missing piece to this puzzle, but it probably has nothing to do with game theory.</p>
<h4>8. What is the nature of the dark energy that drives cosmic acceleration?</h4>
<p>If you think dark matter is frustrating, try explaining dark energy. Something is driving space to expand at an ever increasing rate. Physicists think that they know what it is — the never-changing density of energy residing throughout all of space, referred to by Einstein as the “cosmical term” and now called the cosmological constant.</p>
<p>But when you calculate how strong the cosmological constant should be, the answer is too big by dozens of orders of magnitude — much more than the difference between the size of the entire universe compared with a proton.</p>
<p>So dark energy’s identity remains a mystery; if it is the cosmological constant, something else is seriously wrong with what physicists think they know. And so far game theory has been absolutely no help.</p>
<h4>7. How to measure evidence</h4>
<p>This one is so mysterious that many scientists don’t even know there’s a mystery. But if they paused to think, they’d realize that the standard way of inferring conclusions from experimental data — calculating “statistical significance” — makes about as much sense as punting on fourth and seven when you’re down by 15 with eight minutes to go.</p>
<p>One small example: if you do an experiment and get a statistically significant result, and then repeat it and get a statistically significant result again, you’d think you have better evidence than doing the experiment only once. But if the significance level was a little less the second time, the combined “P value” would be less impressive after the second experiment, even though the evidence ought to be regarded as stronger.</p>
<p>It’s a mess. Game theory would surely be able to help somehow, possibly by virtue of its relationship to&nbsp;<a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/1206.3543" target="_blank">thermodynamics</a>.</p>
<h4>6. Genes, cancer and luck</h4>
<p>You might have&nbsp;<a href="http://news.sciencemag.org/biology/2015/01/simple-math-explains-why-you-may-or-may-not-get-cancer" target="_blank">read recently</a>&nbsp;that most cancer is caused by bad luck, as&nbsp;<a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/content/347/6217/78.abstract" target="_blank">a study published in&nbsp;<em>Science</em></a>&nbsp;supposedly concluded. (Actually, the study concluded that the disparity in prevalence of cancer of various types was largely due to luck.)&nbsp;<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/science/grrlscientist/2015/jan/02/bad-luck-bad-journalism-and-cancer-rates" target="_blank">A firestorm</a>&nbsp;of&nbsp;<a href="http://www.iarc.fr/en/media-centre/pr/2015/pdfs/pr231_E.pdf" target="_blank">protest</a>&nbsp;followed, essentially based on the belief that such a study must be wrong because it would “send the wrong message” to the public. Proving the illogic of that syllogism should be left as an exercise for the reader.</p>
<p>Other responses revealed that experts do not agree on how random mutations (bad luck) compare with heredity (parent’s fault) plus lifestyle (your fault) and environmental exposure to bad things (somebody else’s fault) in causing cancer. Sorting all that out, and in the process solving cancer’s other mysteries, should be a high-priority exercise for 21st century science. And yes, there is a considerable amount of research relating game theory to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.duo.uio.no/bitstream/handle/10852/37685/rand-master.pdf?sequence=1" target="_blank">cancer</a>.</p>
<h4>5. Are there extra dimensions of space?</h4>
<p>I don’t know why people keep thinking this is a mystery, as I have on several occasions pointed out that there are no extra dimensions. However many there are, they are all absolutely necessary. Posed properly, this question should be how many dimensions of space are there? (For that matter, you could also ask about how many time dimensions there are, but that might overlap with No. 4.)</p>
<p>Many physicists believe more dimensions than the ordinary three will be needed for physics to make sense of the universe. (Don’t even ask if they’re talking about bosonic or fermionic dimensions.) A key to understanding this issue is the mathematics of&nbsp;<a href="http://universe-review.ca/R15-26-CalabiYau.htm" target="_blank">Calabi-Yau manifolds</a>, which can curl up in gazillions of different ways to prevent easy detection of the additional dimensions’ existence. And that makes it really hard to figure out which of the gazillion possibilities would correspond to the universe we inhabit (unless there is some sort of fixed point theorem that would choose one, like a&nbsp;<a href="http://home.uchicago.edu/rmyerson/research/jelnash.pdf" target="_blank">Nash equilibrium</a>&nbsp;in game theory).</p>
<p>In any event, anyone attempting to solve this riddle should first read Edwin Abbott’s&nbsp;<a href="http://www.geom.uiuc.edu/~banchoff/Flatland/" target="_blank">Flatland</a>, in which the protagonist character, A. Square, demonstrates the existence of an extra dimension and is promptly thrown in jail.</p>
<h4>4. The nature of time</h4>
<p>So many mysteries, so little time in which to solve them, unless solving this one would reveal some clever tricks to play with time. Many submysteries underlie this one, corresponding to almost all of the 44 definitions of time in the dictionary (and that’s just as a noun).</p>
<p>What’s the nature of duration and the flow of time — is it illusory or “real” in some elusive way? What about the direction of time — does it always go forward? Why? Is time travel possible, or can messages at least be sent backward in time? (Forward in time is easy — just print this blog post out and read it a year from now.)</p>
<p>Perhaps the biggest mystery is whether all these issues about time are related or are completely separate questions. Of course, it would all be simpler if somehow time could be connected to game theory, which it might be, because game theory can be related to&nbsp;<a href="http://homepage.univie.ac.at/Karl.Sigmund/GeolEcolInter00.pdf" target="_blank">cellular automata</a>, which in turn can be related to&nbsp;<a href="http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-642-23477-4_6#page-1" target="_blank">time</a>.</p>
<h4>3. Quantum gravity</h4>
<p>Quantum physics and general relativity (aka Einstein’s theory of gravity) both seem to describe the universe and its components with compelling accuracy, yet they seem wholly incompatible with one another.</p>
<p>Attempts to combine them into a coherent unified theory have been as successful as brokering compromise in the U.S. Congress. Yet there are clues. In 1930, Einstein tried to refute quantum mechanics (specifically, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle) by suggesting a clock attached to a box hanging on a scale could measure both the mass of a photon and the precise time that it escaped from the box. (Heisenberg said you couldn’t measure both at the same time).</p>
<p>But Niels Bohr pointed out that the time on the clock would be uncertain, because as the box moved upward in the gravitational field, Einstein’s relativity required a change in time that would introduce just the amount of uncertainty in the timing that Heisenberg required. So how, you might ask, did the uncertainty principle know about this effect of general relativity?</p>
<p>Maybe if the experts posed the question that way they would be able to figure out the quantum gravity mystery. The next best bet would be to undertake the study of&nbsp;<a href="http://econweb.ucsd.edu/~gdahl/papers/quantum-strategies.pdf" target="_blank">quantum game theory</a>, which hasn’t been adequately exploited yet in this regard. &nbsp;&nbsp;</p>
<h4>2. Does intelligent life exist elsewhere?</h4>
<p>It’s tempting to delete the “elsewhere,” but given what passes for intelligence on Earth, it makes sense to wonder if anything like it could be blundering about on some distant world. It seems likely, given how many other worlds there are out there. But finding out for sure will probably require receiving an actual message.</p>
<p>Projects like&nbsp;<a href="http://www.seti.org/" target="_blank">SETI</a>&nbsp;have been listening for some such message, so far unsuccessfully. There are two (at least) possible explanations: One, there have been no messages (perhaps the aliens are experts at game theory and calculated that contacting humans would be a bad strategy). Two, the messages are there, but nobody knows how to detect or recognize them. Perhaps enhanced scrutiny is in order on Twitter, where numerous tweets every day seem most plausibly to be the work of aliens.&nbsp;</p>
<h4>1. The meaning of quantum entanglement</h4>
<p>All sorts of quantum mysteries remain unsatisfactorily resolved, but maybe the rest would succumb if entanglement does. Entanglement occurs in systems with widely separated parts that share a common history; a measurement of one of the parts reveals what you will find out when you measure its distant relative.</p>
<p>Entanglement is a fact of nature, well-established by experiment. It suggests that time and space do not constrain quantum phenomena the way they do ordinary human activity. Among the latest intriguing aspects of entanglement to be studied involves black holes.</p>
<p>It seems that&nbsp;<a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/1412.8483" target="_blank">black holes can be entangled</a>, which apparently is equivalent to their being connected by a wormhole.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/context/tensor-networks-get-entangled-quantum-gravity">Related work</a>&nbsp;suggests that space, time and gravity are all part of a vast quantum entanglement network. Since both the evolution of<a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/1202.5111" target="_blank">networks and quantum entanglement</a>&nbsp;fit nicely into game theory, solving all sorts of mysteries might boil down to viewing the world from a game-theoretical perspective.</p>
<p>But maybe that will still be too hard for human brains — it might take advanced artificial intelligence, which, as this&nbsp;<a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/1407.5822" target="_blank">paper</a>&nbsp;suggests, might be created with the help of some version of quantum game theory. &nbsp;</p>
<p><em>Editor’s Note: It might not surprise readers to find out that Tom Siegfried is the author of&nbsp;<a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0309101921/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=0309101921&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=sciencenews06-20&amp;linkId=AURODOIPMPEH4B3S" target="_blank">a book about game theory</a>. But he says the book did not include the sort of wild speculation that is suitable only in blog posts.</em></p>
<p><em>Follow me on Twitter:&nbsp;</em><a href="https://twitter.com/tom_siegfried" target="_blank"><em>@tom_siegfried</em></a></p><p><strong>SEE ALSO:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/science-predictions-for-2015-2015-1" >13 Scientific Predictions For 2015</a></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/scientific-mysteries-we-could-solve-in-the-21st-century-2015-1#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/obamas-precision-medicine-program-could-bring-individualized-treatment-2015-1Obama's 'precision medicine' program could bring individualized treatmenthttp://www.businessinsider.com/obamas-precision-medicine-program-could-bring-individualized-treatment-2015-1
Fri, 30 Jan 2015 16:26:38 -0500Ingrid Winship & Timothy Smith
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static5.businessinsider.com/image/522a4aaceab8ea6a75ad5a94-1024-732/3080247531_bf04a5cbe5_b.jpg" border="0" alt="3080247531_bf04a5cbe5_b"></p><p>Hidden among all the other announcements in last week's <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/25/us/obama-to-request-research-funding-for-treatments-tailored-to-patients-dna.html?_r=0">State of the Union address by US President Barack Obama</a>&nbsp;was a promise to fund a new "precision medicine initiative".</p>
<p>The president said it would bring Americans closer to curing illnesses such as cancer and diabetes.</p>
<p>Once funded, the initiative is expected to provide medical researchers with data about the genetic make-up of everyday people.</p>
<p>This data will allow them to undertake research into the genetic causes of common diseases and tailor medicines for them.</p>
<h2>Tailoring medicine</h2>
<p>Precision medicine describes a new approach to the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of diseases. It helps deliver treatment based on the particular variant of the disease by taking the genetic make-up of the ill person into account.</p>
<p>It's underpinned by two key areas of knowledge that have been building rapidly in the recent past. The first is our understanding of the function of human genes and their role in the development and progression of certain diseases.</p>
<p>And the second is the recognition that diseases characterised – and therefore diagnosed – by a particular set of signs and symptoms may arise through fundamentally different biological mechanisms.</p>
<p>One example of such an illness is <a href="http://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/bhcv2/bhcarticles.nsf/pages/Cystic_fibrosis">cystic fibrosis</a>, for which there's already a treatment based on genetic factors.</p>
<p>An inherited condition, cystic fibrosis results from a deficiency in the performance of an enzyme (the cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator) responsible for moving chloride into and out of the cells. To date, scientists have observed over 1,900 changes in the single gene that codes for this enzyme.</p>
<p>Of these genetic changes, one is very common with a frequency of 70%, while 20 are less common, with a combined frequency of 15%. The remaining genetic changes are very rare. So you can see why although cystic fibrosis is considered to be just one disease, it can be caused by many different biochemical mechanisms.</p>
<p>Medication developed in 2012 can effectively treat cystic fibrosis in people who have specific genetic changes. But it's estimated these changes are present in only 4% to 5% of cystic fibrosis patients. The medication is ineffective for the others.</p>
<p>Precision medicine is not just about new and better treatments for diseases, it can also provide guidance on how best to apply current treatments through the study of how individual genetics influence the manner in which drugs are absorbed and metabolised. This particular field of precision medicine is called <a href="https://theconversation.com/pharmacogenomics-explains-why-some-medicines-may-not-work-for-you-12959">pharmacogenomics</a>.</p>
<h2>Technology as the driving force</h2>
<p>Precision medicine relies on having ready access to a large amount of information about genes and how they influence health. It's been driven by recent advancements in DNA sequencing technology, which have drastically increased our ability to generate the data needed to derive this information.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/an-insiders-account-of-the-human-genome-project-13040">first human genome to be sequenced</a> (completed in 2003) took ten years, two large global consortia and billions of dollars. The brunt of the sequencing work in what was known as the <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-is-the-human-genome-project-7559">Human Genome Project</a> was performed using <a href="http://theconversation.com/frederick-sangers-achievements-cannot-be-overstated-20596">Sanger sequencing</a>, a method that involves pushing DNA molecules of varying sizes through a gel using an electric field.</p>
<p>As they move through the gel, the fragments are sorted by size because smaller fragments travel faster than larger ones. The need for these gels is a major limiting factor for this method as only a small number of samples can be sequenced in parallel on any one machine.</p>
<p>But sequencing technology has changed markedly in 12 short years.</p>
<p><img class="full" src="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/522a3ea16bb3f7fb48b36ab1-1024-615/3340435836_d347c3ce3d_b.jpg" border="0" alt="3340435836_d347c3ce3d_b">Beginning in 2005, new technologies that utilised a different method of DNA sequencing and did not rely on gels as separation media came to market.</p>
<p>Crucially, these technologies could be miniaturised and a single instrument could run multiple samples at the same time.</p>
<p>Instruments using these technologies can sequence between one million and 43 billion DNA fragments at a time, depending on the specific technology used.</p>
<p>With these technologies, the cost and time required to sequence a single genome dropped dramatically, from <a href="http://www.genome.gov/sequencingcosts/">around US$100 million in 2011 to around US$4,000 today</a>.</p>
<p>This drastic reduction in cost led to a proliferation of projects designed to sequence genomes in ever-increasing numbers.</p>
<h2>What comes next?</h2>
<p>Precision medicine is still a long way off being the default approach to diagnosis and treatment within regular health-care settings. We still don't know enough about the biological processes that cause disease; we know plenty about what happens when we get sick, but often not how and why.</p>
<p>Sequencing large numbers of genomes – as part of projects that cost millions of dollars and many years to complete – is just the first step towards precision medicine. That data needs to be analysed and compared against the sequence data of healthy and sick people.</p>
<p>Hypotheses need to be posed and tested through big longitudinal studies involving many people before meaningful insights can be made and translated into diagnostic tests, treatments and preventive strategies.</p>
<p>All this requires not just access to genomes but detailed clinical information about people that's routinely collected over time and linked to their genomic sequences.</p>
<p>Another issue that needs to be overcome is the cost of individualised treatments. Drug development is expensive, but the costs are usually offset by the combination of the large number of people who will purchase the new drug and some form of government subsidy.</p>
<p>But precision medicine is designed to develop treatments for smaller numbers of people. Not only does this mean a smaller market across which the cost of drug development needs to be spread, it also means governments may be less likely to offer subsidies. A single year's supply for the cystic fibrosis drug mentioned above, for instance, currently costs more than US$300,000, making it one of the most expensive drugs available in America.</p>
<p>To realise the potential of precision medicine, the driving force behind it needs to shift from technology to clinical practice and improving health service delivery.</p>
<p>Technology has brought us a long way, and no doubt we're not far from another paradigm shift that will allow us to sequence genomes more quickly and cheaply. But it will only ever get us so far.</p>
<p>Only the incorporation of genomics into health care, with robust electronic record systems, will allow for correlation of genomic data with health status. Our focus needs to be on answering real questions about real people's health. And ensuring that national health systems are capable of delivering on the promise of precision medicine.</p>
<p><em>This article was originally published on <a href="http://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a>. Read the <a href="http://theconversation.com/precision-medicine-offers-the-hope-of-cures-made-just-for-you-36771">original article</a>.</em></p><p><strong>SEE ALSO:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.popsci.com/article/science/how-dna-scissors-can-perform-surgery-directly-your-genes#ixzz3QLDUC5KK" >'DNA scissors’ can cut and paste your genes</a></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/obamas-precision-medicine-program-could-bring-individualized-treatment-2015-1#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/photos-of-russias-futuristic-new-tram-2015-1Big, Beautiful Photos Of Russia's New Tram Of The Futurehttp://www.businessinsider.com/photos-of-russias-futuristic-new-tram-2015-1
Tue, 27 Jan 2015 20:30:00 -0500Steven Tweedie
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/53bd625f6da8111e03fa6be3-955-716/russian-one-tram-9.jpg" border="0" alt="Russian One Tram"></p><p>The Russian One is a new commuter tram that looks like something from a sci-fi film.</p>
<p>The futuristic tram features LED cabin lighting, felt-covered sofas, wooden handrails, and sliding glass doors that operate by touchscreen.</p>
<p>Luckily, photographer <a href="http://varlamov.me/ru/novyy-russkiy-tramvay">Ilya Varlamov</a> was able to snap some pictures of the new Russian One prototype, right from the showroom floor.</p>
<p><em>Note: All photos shown are used with permission.</em></p><h3>The Russia One is covered in stunning glass paneling.</h3>
<img src="http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/53bd59b16bb3f7c3648b4570-400-300/the-russia-one-is-covered-in-stunning-glass-paneling.jpg" alt="" />
<br/><br/><h3>This is the tram's designer, Alexei Maslov.</h3>
<img src="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/53bd598cecad043857b89f2d-400-300/this-is-the-trams-designer-alexei-maslov.jpg" alt="" />
<br/><br/><h3>The interior of the tram is incredibly beautiful.</h3>
<img src="http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/53bd5663eab8ea807f61770e-400-300/the-interior-of-the-tram-is-incredibly-beautiful.jpg" alt="" />
<br/><br/><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/photos-of-russias-futuristic-new-tram-2015-1#the-overhead-led-mood-lighting-keeps-the-interior-quite-bright-in-the-morning-and-dim-at-night-4">See the rest of the story at Business Insider</a> http://www.businessinsider.com/how-mobile-banking-will-transform-poor-peoples-lives-by-2030-2015-1Bill Gates Says Cellphones Are The Key To Solving Poor People's Banking Problemshttp://www.businessinsider.com/how-mobile-banking-will-transform-poor-peoples-lives-by-2030-2015-1
Thu, 22 Jan 2015 18:37:49 -0500Natasha Bertrand
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/54c149c26da8119f26cc6d54-1200-858/ap11082415424.jpg" border="0" alt="M-Pesa"></p><p>Over the next 15 years, digital banking will give over 2 billion people an unprecedented level of control over their financial assets, according to the Gates Foundation. The key to this access will be mobile phones.&nbsp;</p>
<p>In its <a href="http://www.gatesnotes.com/2015-annual-letter?WT.mc_id=01_21_2015_DO_GFO_domain_0_00&amp;page=1&amp;lang=en">annual letter</a> published Thursday, the <a href="http://www.gatesfoundation.org/">Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation</a> outlined its goals for the next 15 years, one of which is to help the poor transform their lives by giving them access to mobile banking.</p>
<p>The letter states that roughly 25 billion adults in the world do not currently have a bank account, which prevents them from effectively using what little assets they have.&nbsp;</p>
<p>The lack of access to efficient financial services means many poor people often waste valuable time and money delivering cash to family members by hand or&nbsp;<span>paying high interest rates to unregulated moneylenders. Instead of storing their assets in banks, they hide their cash under the mattress where it only loses value over time.&nbsp;</span></p>
<p><span>The Gates Foundation predicts that by 2030, the&nbsp;<span>2 billion people who don't have a bank account will be making payments and purchases with their phones. They will also use their phones to store money with&nbsp;<span>mobile money providers that will provide them with a full range of financial services — from loans to i<span>nterest-bearing savings accounts.&nbsp;</span></span></span></span></p>
<p><span><span><span><span>It doesn't make financial sense to build a bank branch in a remote village because the poor only save and borrow in small amounts. But as the letter points out, the marginal cost of producing a digital transaction is near zero, and over 70% of adults in developing countries own cellphones — this means mobile banking companies would receive small commissions of millions of transactions at a negligible cost to them. In this way, mobile banking companies would profit from providing their services to even the poorest individuals.&nbsp;</span></span></span></span></p>
<p>The letter cites a Bangladeshi&nbsp;mobile money provider called <a href="http://www.bkash.com/">bKash</a>, which&nbsp;<span>processes roughly 2 million transactions per day adding up to a value of nearly&nbsp;<span>$1 billion each month. Access to bKash is still unequal, however: 76% of men in Bangladesh have a phone versus only 46% of women.&nbsp;</span></span></p>
<p><span><span><span>This problem of disproportionate access is only one challenge facing the mobile banking industry. Others include government regulation, which in many countries limits digital banking, and a lack of locations where people can turn their digital money into cash and vice versa. Still, the Gates Foundation remains optimistic about the number of entrepreneurs worldwide who are devoting themselves to&nbsp;<span>digital financial innovation.</span></span></span></span></p>
<p>The letter also outlined the Foundation's other goals for 2030, which included totally eradicating diseases such as Polio and Guinea worm and drastically reducing the rate of child mortality worldwide.</p><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/how-mobile-banking-will-transform-poor-peoples-lives-by-2030-2015-1#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/ultra-hd-4k-television-tech-2015-1Why Everyone Is So Excited About Ultra-HD TVhttp://www.businessinsider.com/ultra-hd-4k-television-tech-2015-1
Thu, 22 Jan 2015 12:20:00 -0500Justin Gmoser
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<p>It has been all the hype for the past few years at CES, and it can now be found in any store selling televisions. 4K technology is here and here to stay. But is it the right time to buy? Watch to learn how 4K technology works and where it's headed.</p>
<p><em>Produced by <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/author/justin-gmoser">Justin Gmoser</a>.&nbsp;Narration by <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/author/sara-silverstein">Sara Silverstein</a>.</em></p>
<p><strong>Follow BI Video: </strong><a href="https://www.facebook.com/BusinessInsider.Video">On Facebook</a></p><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/ultra-hd-4k-television-tech-2015-1#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/why-you-shouldnt-be-afraid-of-ai-2015-1Afraid Of AI? Here's Why You Shouldn't Behttp://www.businessinsider.com/why-you-shouldnt-be-afraid-of-ai-2015-1
Wed, 21 Jan 2015 15:42:00 -0500Erik Sofge
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/54bffceb69bedd887846aaf0-600-/pepper-humanoid-emotional-robot-from-japan-4.jpg" border="0" alt="Pepper humanoid emotional robot from japan" width="600"></p><p>Earlier in January, an organization called the Future of Life Institute issued an <a href="http://futureoflife.org/misc/open_letter?cmpid=newscred">open letter</a> on the subject of building safety measures into artificial intelligence systems (AI).</p>
<p>The letter, and the research document that accompanies it, present a remarkably even-handed look at how AI researchers can maximize the potential of this technology.</p>
<p>Here's the letter at its most ominous, which is to say, not ominous at all:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Because of the great potential of AI, it is important to research how to reap its benefits while avoiding potential pitfalls.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>And here was CNET's headline, for its story about the letter:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Artificial intelligence experts sign open letter to protect mankind from machines</p>
</blockquote>
<p>BBC News, meanwhile, ventured slightly further out of the panic room to deliver this falsehood:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Experts pledge to rein in AI research</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I'd like to think that this is rock bottom.</p>
<p>Journalists can't possibly be any more clueless, or callously traffic-baiting, when it comes to robots and AI. And readers have to get tired, at some point, of clicking on the same shrill headlines, that quote the same non-AI researchers—Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking, to be specific—making the same doomsday proclamations.</p>
<p>Fear-mongering always loses its edge over time, and even the most toxic media coverage has an inherent half-life. But it never stops.</p>
<p>Forget about the risk that machines pose to us in the decades ahead. The more pertinent question, in 2015, is whether anyone is going to protect mankind from its willfully ignorant journalists.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>This is what it looks like to make a fool of yourself, when covering AI.</p>
<p>Start by doing as little reporting as possible. In this case, that means reading an open letter released online, and not bothering to interview any of the people involved in its creation.</p>
<p>To use the <a href="http://www.cnet.com/news/artificial-intelligence-experts-sign-open-letter-to-protect-mankind-from-machines/?cmpid=newscred">CNET</a> and <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-30777834?cmpid=newscred">BBC</a> stories as examples, neither includes quotes or clarifications from the researchers who helped put together either the letter or its <a href="http://futureoflife.org/static/data/documents/research_priorities.pdf?cmpid=newscred">companion research document</a>. This is a function of speed, but it's also a tactical decision (whether conscious or not). Like every story that centers on frantic warnings about apocalyptic AI, the more you report, the more threadbare the premise turns out to be.</p>
<p>Experts in this field tend to point out that the theater isn't on fire, which is no fun at all when your primary mission is to send readers scrambling for the exit.</p>
<p>The speedier, and more dramatic course of action is to provide what looks like context, but is really just <a href="http://www.popsci.com/our-savior-supervillain?cmpid=newscred">Elon Musk</a> and <a href="http://www.popsci.com/blog-network/zero-moment/robots-are-evil-sci-fi-myth-killer-machines?cmpid=newscred">Stephen Hawking</a> talking about a subject that is neither of their specialties. I'm mentioning them, in particular, because they've become the collective voice of AI panic.</p>
<p>They believe that machine superintelligence could lead to our extinction. And their comments to that effect have the ring of truth, because they come from brilliant minds with a blessed lack of media filters. If time is money, then the endlessly recycled quotes from Musk and Hawking are a goldmine for harried reporters and editors. What more context do you need, than a pair of geniuses publicly fretting about the fall of humankind?</p>
<p>And that's all it takes to report on a topic whose stakes couldn't possibly be higher. Cut and paste from online documents, and from previous interviews, tweets and comments, affix a headline that conjures visions of skeletal androids stomping human skulls underfoot, and wait for the marks to come gawking.</p>
<p>That's what this sort of journalism does to its creators, and to its consumers. It turns a complex, and transformative technology into a carnival sideshow. Actually, that's giving most AI coverage too much credit. Carnies work hard for their wages. Tech reporters just have to work fast.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>The story behind the open letter is, in some ways, more interesting than the letter itself. On January 2, roughly 70 researchers met at a hotel in San Juan, Puerto Rico, for a three-day conference on AI safety. This was a genuinely secretive event.</p>
<p>The Future of Life Institute (FLI) hadn't alerted the media in advance, or invited any reporters to attend, despite having planned the meeting at least six months in advance. Even now, the event's organizers won't provide a complete list of attendees. FLI wanted researchers to speak candidly, and without worry of attribution, during the weekend-long schedule of formal and informal discussions.</p>
<p>In a movie, this shadowy conference, hosted by an organization with a tantalizing name—and held in a tropical locale, no less—would have come under preemptive assault from some rampaging algorithmic reboot of Frankenstein's monster.</p>
<p>Or, in the hands of more patient filmmakers, the result would have been a first-act setup: an urgent call to immediately halt all AI research (ignored, of course, by a rebellious lunatic in a darkened server room). Those headlines from BBC News and CNET would have been perfectly at home on the movie screen, signaling the global response to a legitimately terrifying announcement.</p>
<p>In fact, the open letter from FLI is a pretty bloodless affair. The title alone—Research Priorities for Robust and Beneficial Artificial Intelligence: an Open Letter—should manage the reader's expectations. The letter references advances in machine learning, neuroscience, and other research areas that, in combination, are yielding promising results for AI systems. As for doom and gloom, the only relevant statements are the afore-mentioned sentence about “potential pitfalls,” and this one:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“We recommend expanded research aimed at ensuring that increasingly capable AI systems are robust and beneficial: our AI systems must do what we want them to do.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>That, in all honesty, is as dark as this open letter gets. A couple of slightly arch statements, buried within a document whose language is intentionally optimistic. The signatories are interested in “maximizing the societal benefit of AI,” and the letter ends with this call to action.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“In summary, we believe that research on how to make AI systems robust and beneficial is both important and timely, and that there are concrete research directions that can be pursued today.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This is the document that news outlets are interpreting as a call to protect humanity from machines, and to rein in AI R&amp;D. It's also proof that many journalists aren't simply missing the point, when it comes to artificial intelligence. They are lying to you.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>The truth is, there are researchers within the AI community who are extremely concerned about the question of artificial superintelligence, which is why FLI included a section in the letter's companion document about those fears. But it's also true that these researchers are in the extreme minority.</p>
<p>And according to Bart Selman, a professor of computer science at Cornell, the purpose of the open letter was to tamp down the hysteria that journalists are trying to instill in the general public, while bringing up near-term concerns.</p>
<p>Some of these issues are complex, and compelling. Will a mortgage company's machine learning system accidentally violate an applicant's privacy, and possibly even break the law, by digging too deep into his or her metadata? Selman isn't worried about rebellious algorithms, but faulty or over-eager ones.</p>
<p>“These systems are often given fairly high level goals. So making sure that they don't achieve their goals by something dramatically different than you could anticipate are reasonable research goals,” says Selman. “The problem we have is that the press, the popular press in particular, goes for this really extreme angle of superintelligence, and AI taking over. And we're trying to show them that, that's one angle that you could worry about, but it's not that big of a worry for us.”</p>
<p>Of course, it's statements like that which, when taken out of context, can fuel the very fires they're trying to put out. Selman, who attended the San Juan conference and contributed to FLI's open letter and research document, cannot in good conscience rule out a future outcome for the field of AI.</p>
<p>That sort of dogmatic dismissal is anathema to a responsible scientist. But he also isn't above throwing a bit of shade at the researchers who seem preoccupied with the prospect of bootstrapped AI, meaning a system that suddenly becomes exponentially smarter and more capable.</p>
<p>“The people who've been working in this area for 20, 30 years, they know this problem of complexity and scaling a little better than people are new to the area,” says Selman.</p>
<p>The history of AI research is full of theoretical benchmarks and milestones whose only barrier appeared to be a lack of computing resources. And yet, even as processor and storage technology has raced ahead of researchers' expectations, the deadlines for AI's most promising (or terrifying, depending on your agenda) applications remain stuck somewhere in the next 10 or 20 years.</p>
<p>I've written before about the myth of <a href="http://www.popsci.com/blog-network/zero-moment/end-ai-singularity-sci-fis-faith-based-initiative?cmpid=newscred">inevitable superintelligence</a>, but Selman is much more succinct on the subject. The key mistake, he says, is in confusing principle with execution, and assuming that throwing more resources at given system will trigger an explosive increase in capability.</p>
<p>“People in computer science are very much aware that, even if you can do something in principle, if you had unlimited resources, you might still not be able to do it,” he says, “because unlimited resources don't mean an exponential scaling up. And if you do have an exponential scale, suddenly you have 20 times the variables.”</p>
<p>Bootstrapping AI is simultaneously an AI researcher's worst nightmare and dream come true—instead of grinding away at the same piece of bug-infested code for weeks on end, he or she can sit back, and watch the damn thing write itself.</p>
<p>At the heart of this fear of superintelligence is a question that, at present, can't be answered.</p>
<p>“The mainstream AI community does believe that systems will get to a human-level intelligence in 10 or 20 years, though I don't mean all aspects of intelligence,” says Selman.</p>
<p>Speech and vision recognition, for example, might individually reach that level of capability, without adding up to a system that understands the kind of social cues that even toddlers can pick up on.</p>
<p>“But will computers be great programmers, or great mathematicians, or other things that require creativity? That's much less clear. There are some real computational barriers to that, and they may actually be fundamental barriers,” says Selman.</p>
<p>While superintelligence doesn't have to spring into existence with recognizably human thought processes—peppering its bitter protest poetry with references to <em>Paradise Lost</em>—it would arguably have to be able to program itself into godhood. Is such a thing possible in principle, much less in practice?</p>
<p>It's that question that FLI is hoping the AI community will explore, though not with any particular urgency. When I spoke to Viktoriya Krakovna, one of the organization's founders, she was alarmed at how the media has interpreted the open letter, and focused almost exclusively on the issue of superintelligence.</p>
<p>"We wanted to show that the AI research community is a community of responsible people, who are trying to build beneficial robots and AI," she says. Instead, reporters have presented the letter as something like an act of contrition, punishing FLI for creating a document that's inclusive enough to include the possibility of researching the question--not the threat, but the question--of runaway AI.</p>
<p>Selman sees such a project as a job for “a few people,” to try to define a problem that hasn't been researched or even defined. He compares it to work done by theoretical physicists, who might calculate the effects of some cosmic cataclysm as a pure research question.</p>
<p>Until it can be determined that this version of the apocalypse is feasible in principle, there's nothing to safeguard against. This is an important distinction, that's easily overlooked. For science to work, it has to be concerned with the observable universe, not with superstition couched in scientific jargon.</p>
<p>Sadly, the chances of AI coverage becoming any less fear-mongering are about as likely as the Large Hadron Collider producing a planet-annihilating black hole. Remember that easily digestible non-story, and the way it dwarfed the true significance of that particle accelerator? When it comes to the difficult business of covering science and technology, nothing grabs readers like threatening their lives.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.popsci.com/open-letter-everyone-tricked-fearing-ai?cmpid=newscred">This article</a> originally appeared on Popular Science</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>This article was written by Erik Sofge from Popular Science and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network.</p>
<p><img class="nc_pixel" src="https://pixel.newscred.com/px.gif?key=YXJ0aWNsZT0zMTNmMGI0NDY5NjViMDlhNDAwNDY2OTU5MDNmOWY3ZiZwdWJsaXNoZXI9NzMwZWI4NmFiNTlmMGQ0MTkyNmFjNjViMDFmODNlMmY=" border="0" alt="" width="1" height="1"> https://images1.newscred.com/cD03MzBlYjg2YWI1OWYwZDQxOTI2YWM2NWIwMWY4M2UyZiZnPWY2MTlmOTM2YWRiZTEwYTg4MzUwNjIwZTZkMjk4YTYw</p><p><strong>SEE ALSO:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/science-predictions-for-2015-2015-1" >13 Scientific Predictions For 2015</a></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/why-you-shouldnt-be-afraid-of-ai-2015-1#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/sc/megatrends-that-will-affect-the-us-2015-1These 3 megatrends will affect our quality of life over the next 50 yearshttp://www.businessinsider.com/sc/megatrends-that-will-affect-the-us-2015-1
Thu, 15 Jan 2015 10:19:00 -0500Sponsor Post
<p><a href="http://www.toshiba.com/tai/americas/us.jsp" target="_blank"><img style="float:right;" src="http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/5485d63beab8ea812c249bff-1200-924/toshiba-america.jpg" border="0" alt="Toshiba America"></a><em>This post is sponsored by <a href="http://www.toshiba.com/" target="_blank">Toshiba</a>.</em></p>
<p>It's hard to remember a time when <a href="http://www.toshiba.com/" target="_blank">Toshiba</a>&nbsp;wasn't around. The brand is known for its laptops, tablets, TVs, and printers. Behind the scenes, we rely on Toshiba power generation systems, semiconductors, and medical-diagnostic equipment.</p>
<p>But in 1965, Toshiba America started out small, supplying industrial motors and electronics. Today, the company addresses major industries, such as&nbsp;energy and infrastructure, healthcare, and retail, focusing on a quality-of-life vision it calls <a href="http://www.toshiba.com/tai/lifenology.jsp" target="_blank">Human Smart Community by lifenology</a>.</p>
<p>As the company celebrates its 50th anniversary this year, it's time to ask: Where is Toshiba now, and where is it going over the next 50 years?</p>
<p>The company is focused on the following three megatrends, which will have major effects on our economy over the coming decades.</p>
<h3>1. The US needs a stable energy supply.</h3>
<p>Along with that, the country will have to confront the environmental issues associated with changing how we get our energy.&nbsp;Toshiba’s Energy &amp; Infrastructure group is working to ensure a stable energy supply while reducing C02 and greenhouse-gas emissions through hydro, solar, geothermal, and wind power generation. It will also look to thermal, hydroelectric, and nuclear power generation to solve our needs. On the consumer side of the equation, Toshiba employs smart metering technologies and demand management, the integration of renewables and advanced battery energy storage systems to further improve energy efficiency, reliability and sustainable use of resources.</p>
<h3>2. We're all getting older.&nbsp;</h3>
<p>As the US population ages, we're going to face rising healthcare costs. By 2030, 20% of us will be eligible for Medicare. Toshiba’s Healthcare group is developing innovations such as safer and quicker noninvasive diagnostic-imaging procedures, and it uses big-data analysis to predict and treat illness. This will allow healthcare providers to rein in treatment costs.</p>
<h3>3. We're starting to shop differently.</h3>
<p>Technology's rapid development will affect America's traditional retail operations. As the leading retail-solutions company in the US, Toshiba is redefining the interaction between retailers and customers, online and in stores. Toshiba's retail solutions are designed to support transactions from virtually any location or device.&nbsp;</p>
<p>In 50 years, Toshiba America has grown dramatically, now employing more than 18,000 people across the US. As it looks ahead to the next 50 years, Toshiba will continue to focus on delivering products, technologies, and solutions that improve quality of life, addressing issues such as energy conservation, healthcare, societal shifts, and environmental changes at their core.</p>
<p>As the US changes, Toshiba continues to evolve too. The company promises to be at the forefront of new opportunities and challenges every step of the way, embracing solutions to be a more agile partner for businesses and consumers.</p>
<p><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;"><a href="http://www.toshiba.com/tai/" target="_blank">To find out more about Toshiba, visit the company's website</a>.&nbsp;</strong></p>
<p>Find out&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/sponsor-posts">more about Sponsored Content</a>.</p><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/sc/megatrends-that-will-affect-the-us-2015-1#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/ipad-air-plus-original-mac-2015-1If The iPad Air And Original Mac Had A Child, It Might Look Like This (AAPL)http://www.businessinsider.com/ipad-air-plus-original-mac-2015-1
Wed, 14 Jan 2015 19:53:46 -0500Sam Colt
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/54b704fe69bedd2c217f378e-480-/mac8-1.png" border="0" alt="Mac8" width="480"></p><p></p>
<p>T<span style="line-height: 1.5em;">he Macintosh is over 30 years old.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">In honor of how far the personal computer has come since then, Curved Labs <a href="https://curved.de/news/curvedlabs-ein-facelift-fuer-den-macintosh-198570">designed a modern Macintosh</a> that draws on the iPad Air.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">We won't ever see this computer in the Apple Store, but it's still fun to look at.</span></p><h3>This computer would be hard to miss, thanks to its curved base and striking resemblance to the original Macintosh. It would have an 11-inch touchscreen in real life.</h3>
<img src="http://static5.businessinsider.com/image/54b704ddecad04122f7f3788-400-300/this-computer-would-be-hard-to-miss-thanks-to-its-curved-base-and-striking-resemblance-to-the-original-macintosh-it-would-have-an-11-inch-touchscreen-in-real-life.jpg" alt="" />
<br/><br/><h3>In this side-by-side shot, you can see how much computer design has evolved since the 1980s. </h3>
<img src="http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/54b704ddecad0452257f378b-400-300/in-this-side-by-side-shot-you-can-see-how-much-computer-design-has-evolved-since-the-1980s.jpg" alt="" />
<br/><br/><h3>Curved's concept kept the glowing Apple logo that we've seen on so many iMacs and MacBooks.</h3>
<img src="http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/54b704de69bedd37217f3788-400-300/curveds-concept-kept-the-glowing-apple-logo-that-weve-seen-on-so-many-imacs-and-macbooks.jpg" alt="" />
<br/><br/><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/ipad-air-plus-original-mac-2015-1#the-ventilation-and-fan-is-discretely-hid-behind-the-computer-this-concept-has-a-headphone-jack-usb-port-and-lightning-port-even-though-apple-is-slowly-doing-away-with-those-4">See the rest of the story at Business Insider</a> http://www.businessinsider.com/mercedes-new-self-driving-car-f-015-2015-1The New Mercedes Driverless Car Even Has The Driver's Seat Facing Away From The Roadhttp://www.businessinsider.com/mercedes-new-self-driving-car-f-015-2015-1
Wed, 14 Jan 2015 12:12:00 -0500Devan Joseph
<p>Mercedes unveiled its futuristic, self-driving Mercedes-Benz F 015 concept Jan. 5 at the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.</p>
<p>The F 015 can be operated autonomously or manually. When the vehicle is in fully driverless mode, the four motorized lounge chairs can be rotated to allow face-to-face conversations. When required for manual operation, the driver's chair swivels back to face forward.<br><br><em>Video courtesy of Mercedes-Benz</em></p>
<p><strong>Follow BI Video:</strong> <a href="https://www.facebook.com/BusinessInsider.Video">On Facebook</a></p><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/mercedes-new-self-driving-car-f-015-2015-1#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/1987-ad-is-massively-wrong-about-inflation-2015-1This Hilarious 1987 Ad That Predicted The Future Was Wrong About Everythinghttp://www.businessinsider.com/1987-ad-is-massively-wrong-about-inflation-2015-1
Tue, 13 Jan 2015 10:31:42 -0500Paul Colgan
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/54b53a82dd0895d8258b458c-1024-768/inflation ad-super_price_predictions.jpg" border="0" alt="Inflation Ad super_price_predictions"></p><p>The&nbsp;<a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/uk-deflation-might-be-a-good-thing-2015-1" target="_blank">dramatic lowering of the global inflation outlook&nbsp;over recent months</a> is a sharp reminder of the folly of forecasting anything on the basis that prices will always go up.</p>
<p>Exhibit A: this Australian ad from 1987, predicting what a range of consumer items would cost in 2010, based on a steady inflation rate of 8 per cent!</p>
<p>It was posted to&nbsp;<a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/australia/comments/2s54lu/what_things_will_cost_in_the_year_2010_found_in_a/">Reddit Australia by jocorga</a>&nbsp;and is purportedly an Adelaide ad encouraging people to plough more money into their superannuation pension.</p>
<p>Where to start? Let’s go with the cheese sandwich. It’s probably between $5 and $8 nowadays.</p>
<p>Thanks to the dramatic expansion of airline competition you can get a return flight to London for less than $2,000 and $8,800 might even get you business class.</p>
<p>A man’s suit can easily be found for&nbsp;<em>less</em>&nbsp;than $350, and&nbsp;<a href="http://www.kmart.com.au/category/sports/shop-by-product-type/bikes-&amp;-accessories/251028#">a kid’s bike for under $100</a>.</p>
<p>And so on. Despite the ad’s protestations, it is complete “pie-in-the-sky”.</p>
<p>Some figures are notable underestimates in the ad, which was printed five years before the introduction of compulsory superannuation in Australia: housing, and the pension. The median house price in Adelaide – one of the quieter corners of Australia’s famously expensive property market were over $400,000 in 2010. And the pension rose faster than expected – something the government is wrestling with now – and stands at just under $777 for a single person.</p>
<p>Two observations from this: (1) believing the way things are now is the way things will be in the future is foolish, and (2) Australian property prices are vastly out of whack with the cost of living.</p>
<p>Even in Southern Australia.</p><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/1987-ad-is-massively-wrong-about-inflation-2015-1#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/science-predictions-for-2015-2015-113 Scientific Predictions For 2015http://www.businessinsider.com/science-predictions-for-2015-2015-1
Sun, 11 Jan 2015 10:35:00 -0500Kevin Loria
<p>Some incredible things happened in the <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/2014s-most-important-discoveries-2015-1">science world in 2014</a>, but one of the best things about science is that we learn more and make progress every year.</p>
<p>We take new steps that we couldn't imagine decades ago. And if we look at the rate of change over time, it's astounding.</p>
<p>As retired Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/astronaut-chris-hadfield-inspiration-video-2014-12">recently said</a>, "In 100 years we've gone from filming the Wright brothers to landing a camera on Titan, a moon 800 million miles away." That's pretty incredible.</p>
<p>So let's look ahead.</p>
<p>Here are a few potential world changers that we're looking for over the next year:</p>
<h2>1. Reusable rockets being tested by SpaceX could transform the future of space travel.</h2>
<p><img class="full" src="http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/544ff061ecad04c143b3adc5-840-544/elon musk spacex.jpg" border="0" alt="elon musk spaceX">If we're ever going to set up a colony on Mars, we're going to need to be able to land rockets there that can be re-used for a journey back to Earth. Not only that, but this reuseable rocket technology will make all space travel much cheaper.</p>
<p>And while a first-stage rocket — the bottom or largest rocket in certain launches — has never been recovered for re-use before, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-falcon-9-ocean-landing-january-6-2015-1">Elon Musk and SpaceX want to change that</a> this year.</p>
<p>On Jan. 10, SpaceX succesfully directed a rocket from approximately 50 miles <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-falcon-9-reusability-test-livestream-2015-1">up back to a landing platform</a> in the ocean, but it came down so hard that it won't be reusable. Still, that indicates good potential for future success, and Musk has said they plan on attempting about a dozen launches and subsequent landings on ocean platforms throughout the year.&nbsp;</p>
<p>In other SpaceX news, <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2rgsan/i_am_elon_musk_ceocto_of_a_rocket_company_ama/">Musk recently added</a> that SpaceX is hoping to announce the plans for their Mars transport system, which will be completely different from the Falcon and Dragon systems they've been using so far.</p>
<h2>2. The first version of C-3PO is going on sale in February, and its name is Pepper.</h2>
<p><img class="full" src="http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/5391d1036bb3f7ad6e03e62b-1200-1000/ap926738259953.jpg" border="0" alt="Pepper humanoid emotional robot from japan">The <a href="http://spectrum.ieee.org/robotics/home-robots/how-aldebaran-robotics-built-its-friendly-humanoid-robot-pepper">Japanes</a><a href="http://spectrum.ieee.org/robotics/home-robots/how-aldebaran-robotics-built-its-friendly-humanoid-robot-pepper">e company Softbank will begin selling a humanoid robot</a> produced by the French company Aldebaran Robotics. Pepper has an "emotion engine" that uses artificial intelligence to help it learn your mood from face cues and learn from past experiences, and it's fluent in Japanese, English, Spanish, and French — not quite 6 million forms of communication, but a start.</p>
<p>And while this robot is designed to be more of a companion than a helper (better at reading you a recipe than manipulating the tools to cook food, <a href="http://spectrum.ieee.org/robotics/home-robots/how-aldebaran-robotics-built-its-friendly-humanoid-robot-pepper">according to IEEE Spectrum</a>), it should become more and more capable over time as new applications and capabilities are programmed in.</p>
<h2>3. We could learn that there's an invisible universe that mirrors our own.</h2>
<p><img class="full" src="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/547395daecad04ab3c9f17b2-1200-800/largehadroncollider1.jpg" border="0" alt="Large Hadron Collider">The Large Hadron Collider is going to <a href="http://www.nature.com/news/what-to-expect-in-2015-1.16626">power back on in March</a> after a two year hiatus and it will be crashing particles together at twice the power it had before. No one knows exactly what we'll learn from this, but possibilities include particles associated with dark matter.</p>
<p>Further, the presence or absence of certain particles could prove or disprove the supersymmetry theory, <a href="http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-cern-march-2015-protons-higher-speeds-20141215-story.html">which holds that there is a mirror universe</a> to our own made of invisible particles that have mass and correspond to what we can see.</p>
<h2>4. Parts of Einstein's theory of relativity could be proven — or disproven — depending on whether or not we find gravitational waves.</h2>
<p><img class="full" src="http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/54a2d67decad041034ce4467-1200-1000/3245599.jpg" border="0" alt="einstein chalkboard learning smart">If physics works as Einstein thought, there should be gravitational waves rippling through space-time. Two experiments this year give us our greatest shot at detecting those waves ever.</p>
<p>In July, the <a href="http://www.popsci.com/node/223160">LISA Pathfinder will launch to test technology</a> for a space-based gravitational wave observatory.</p>
<p>On Earth, the most sensitive gravitational wave detectors we've ever built, the <a href="https://www.advancedligo.mit.edu/summary.html">Advanced LIGO detectors</a>, will be turned on.</p>
<h2>5. We're getting our closest look ever at Pluto. (And we're visiting Ceres, another dwarf planet.)</h2>
<p><img class="full" src="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/54ab226beab8ea58568dcf5b-1199-899/hubble-image-of-pluto-1.jpg" border="0" alt="hubble image of pluto">The <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/new-horizons-pluto-watching-probe-2014-11">New Horizons mission</a>, which launched Jan. 19, 2006, back when Pluto still had eight months left of being called a planet, will arrive at its closest point to the dwarf planet after a 5 billion kilometer journey on July 14.</p>
<p>It'll snap some photos that will show us Pluto's surface and Charon, its largest moon, before heading on to explore the Kuiper Belt.</p>
<p>In April, NASA's Dawn probe will reach Ceres, the largest asteroid in the belt between Mars and Jupiter, and <a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-to-expect-scientists-to-do-in-2015/?utm_source=twitterfeed&amp;utm_medium=twitter">one that's believed</a> to have water ice beneath its crust.</p>
<h2>6. The world's worst Ebola epidemic ever will hopefully be stopped.</h2>
<p><img class="full" src="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/544916fc69beddbd6d5ad034-1200-858/457111806.jpg" border="0" alt="Ebola survivor">The Ebola epidemic is <a href="http://www.who.int/csr/disease/ebola/situation-reports/en/">far from over</a> in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. Drug tests are underway and vaccine trials are <a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-to-expect-scientists-to-do-in-2015/">scheduled to begin</a> soon. Hopefully these, combined with improved public health measures, make a crucial difference toward stopping the worst outbreak of Ebola we've ever seen.</p>
<h2>7. The FAA is supposed to come up with airspace regulations for drones.</h2>
<p><img class="full" src="http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/549341aa69bedd2e03bd4e63-1200-800/8725078749_00627cd860_o.jpg" border="0" alt="Drone ">Congress has mandated that by September, the FAA has to come up with a way for drones to be integrated into US airspace, making those Amazon drone-delivered packages a possibility, but also with various uses for scientists, including watching wildlife, creating maps, and monitoring wilderness areas — but <a href="http://www.theverge.com/2014/7/1/5862158/faa-will-likely-miss-september-2015-drone-integration-deadline-report">there are indications</a> that despite the legal regulation, they won't hit that deadline.</p>
<h2>8. The world will most likely strike a new deal to limit the effects of climate change.</h2>
<p><img class="full" src="http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/54204499ecad04ca75be14cc-1200-800/ccmarch (34 of 38).jpg" border="0" alt="CCMARCH (34 of 38)">The groundwork has already been laid for an international agreement at UN meetings in Paris in December to try and limit future greenhouse gas emissions, starting in 2020.</p>
<p>The world's two largest CO2 emitters, the US and China, have <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/r-china-agrees-co2-peak-by-2030-us-to-cut-emissions-by-quarter-2014-11">already made a deal</a> which should make agreement much easier. The question is, with <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/watch-atmospheric-carbon-swirl-the-globe-2014-11">atmospheric CO2 already topping 400 ppm</a> in much of the Northern Hemisphere during parts of the year (significantly above the "safe" level of 350 ppm), <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/lima-un-climate-meeting-disappointment-2014-12">will whatever action</a> they take be enough?</p>
<h2>9. We'll analyze the full genome of a 400,000 year old human and learn more about how ancient human species interbred.</h2>
<p><img class="full" src="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/52e9355aecad04aa7099e8a0-1200-1200/rtr2b3e5.jpg" border="0" alt="Neanderthal"><a href="http://www.nature.com/news/what-to-expect-in-2015-1.16626">Palaeogeneticists are trying to sequence</a> the entire genome from the remains of a Sima de Los Huesos human, which were found in a cave in northern Spain.</p>
<p>It'll be tough and we don't know if it's possible (analyzing the mitochondrial DNA last year was hard enough), but this should teach us more about how ancient hominid species were interrelated — and how our species emerged as the only surviving one.</p>
<h2>10. We'll get closer to stopping HIV.</h2>
<p><img class="full" src="http://static5.businessinsider.com/image/5273d1e8ecad04014eb86b36-1200-800/rtxvezz.jpg" border="0" alt="Russia HIV activists AIDS symbol">AIDS is still the <a href="http://www.who.int/hiv/en/">world's leading infectious killer</a>, but important steps in diagnosis and treatment mean that scientists have reason to think we could be at a turning point in the fight against the virus.</p>
<p><a href="http://spectrum.ieee.org/biomedical/diagnostics/bringing-hiv-labs-by-backpack-to-rural-africa">Backpack-sized diagnostic labs</a> are expected to arrive in Africa, and new drugs like Truvada can actually prevent people from catching HIV in the first place.</p>
<p>And even though we've tried to develop a vaccine that can stop this deadly virus unsuccessfully for years, scientists say that <a href="http://www.latimes.com/science/la-sci-hiv-spike-20141009-story.html">new insights into the structure of certain HIV proteins</a> put them closer than ever towards actually developing a vaccine.</p>
<h2>11. A Dengue vaccine could be available.</h2>
<p><img class="full" src="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/5390c0eb69beddac7a6ba579-1200-675/skin2.png" border="0" alt="Mosquito on Skin">Though Dengue isn't always fatal, it's a terribly painful disease that half the world's population is at risk of catching. Plus, it <a href="http://www.who.int/topics/dengue/en/">kills 20,000 a year and is the leading</a> cause of death for children in certain countries. But a <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/how-will-medicine-change-in-2015-2014-11">vaccine has been developed</a> that protects against 60% of regular Dengue cases and is 95.5% protective against the severe, potentially fatal form of the disease.</p>
<p>That vaccine could be available in the second half of the year.</p>
<h2>12. Major research projects studying artificial intelligence will take their first steps.</h2>
<p><img class="full" src="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/539ac435ecad042a043123a3-1200-858/rtr3elof.jpg" border="0" alt="artificial intelligence robot">Once we develop human-level AI, the <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/ray-kurzweil-thinks-well-have-human-level-ai-by-2029-2014-12">world will never be the same</a> — and some scientists think that time is coming sooner rather than later.</p>
<p>In Seattle, Paul Allen's <a href="http://allenai.org/semantic-scholar.html">Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence</a> will launch one of their three pilot AI programs, Semantic Scholar, designed to help researchers deal with the flood of new research that's continuously published in the academic world.</p>
<p>Additionally, a new 100-year study examining AI will release its first report late in the year.</p>
<p>In late 2014, Eric Horvitz began a <a href="https://stanford.app.box.com/s/266hrhww2l3gjoy9euar">100-year-long study at Stanford</a> examining the future effects of AI. They will release their first analysis of the current state and future of AI near the end of 2015.</p>
<h2>13. Institutions and projects dealing with world-changing research take their first steps.</h2>
<p><img class="full" src="http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/53751e6f6bb3f76303360e24-900-504/graphene-2.png" border="0" alt="Graphene">In the US, the $100-million <a href="http://alleninstitutecellscience.org/">Allen Institute for Cell Science</a> will take some of its first looks into the basic building block of life.</p>
<p>In the UK, the <a href="http://www.materials.manchester.ac.uk/our-research/cross-cutting-research/uom/national-graphene-institute/">National Graphene Institute</a> will open, where they'll study the <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/graphene-applications-2014-6">wonder-material graphene</a>, which could eventually transform everything from fuel cell technology to battery and computing power and more.</p>
<p>And in France, teams will <a href="http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/NN-ITER-receives-first-plant-components-0509201401.html">begin to assemble</a> the components to <a href="http://www.popsci.com/year-ideas-2015">construct Iter, a fusion energy project</a> that'll be the largest thermonuclear reactor ever built.</p>
<h2>Bonus: We have the greatest chance yet of discovering signs of extraterrestrial life.</h2>
<p><img class="full" src="http://static5.businessinsider.com/image/541206f7eab8ea286ece63a9-1142-538/martian-sunset-o-de-goursac-curiosity-2013.jpg" border="0" alt="Martian Sunset O de Goursac Curiosity 2013">We're counting this as a bonus because it's incredibly unlikely, but there's still a greater chance that we'll find traces of extraterrestrial life on Mars in 2015 than ever before.</p>
<p>This is largely due to the Curiosity Rover's detection of a spike in atmospheric methane. But tracing this gas to actual existing or extinct life is still difficult and far from certain.</p>
<p>Still, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/when-will-we-find-et-aliens-2014-12">it's a slim chance</a>, but between this and our current and future plans to explore other bodies that may have water (or had water in the past), the possibility that we find some form of life continues to grow.</p><p><strong>SEE ALSO:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/top-11-physics-discoveries-of-2014-2015-1" >11 Awesome Physics Discoveries Of 2014</a></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/science-predictions-for-2015-2015-1#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/mythbusters-adam-savage-scientific-fact-water-earth-2015-1Adam Savage Of 'MythBusters' Says This Scientific Fact Blows His Mindhttp://www.businessinsider.com/mythbusters-adam-savage-scientific-fact-water-earth-2015-1
Fri, 09 Jan 2015 11:33:00 -0500Justin Gmoser
<p><a href="http://www.discovery.com/tv-shows/mythbusters/">"MythBusters"</a> host Adam Savage has learned his fair share of science in over 200 episodes of the Discovery show. But he says this one scientific fact blows his mind.&nbsp;</p>
<p><em>Produced by <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/author/justin-gmoser">Justin Gmoser</a></em></p>
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<p>&nbsp;</p><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/mythbusters-adam-savage-scientific-fact-water-earth-2015-1#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/artificial-intelligence-isnt-dangerous-yet-2015-1Artificial Intelligence Is Still A Long Way From Being A 'Doomsday Machine' http://www.businessinsider.com/artificial-intelligence-isnt-dangerous-yet-2015-1
Tue, 06 Jan 2015 18:07:00 -0500Tony Prescott
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/539ac435ecad042a043123a3-600-/rtr3elof.jpg" border="0" alt="artificial intelligence robot" width="600"></p><p>The possibility that advanced artificial intelligence (AI) might one day turn against its human creators has been repeatedly raised of late.</p>
<p>Renowned physicist Stephen Hawking, for instance, surprised by the ability of his newly-upgraded speech synthesis system to anticipate what he was trying to say, has suggested that, in the future, AI could surpass human intelligence and ultimately <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-30290540">bring about the end of humankind</a>.</p>
<p>Hawking is not alone in worrying about superintelligent AI. A <a href="https://theconversation.com/super-intelligent-machines-arent-to-be-feared-15709">growing number</a> of futurologists, philosophers and AI researchers have expressed concerns that artificial intelligence could leave humans outsmarted and outmanoeuvred.</p>
<p>My view is that this is unlikely, as humans will always use an improved AI to improve themselves. A malevolent AI will have to outwit not only raw human brainpower but the combination of humans and whatever loyal AI-tech we are able to command – a combination that will best either on their own.</p>
<p>There are many examples already: Clive Thompson, in his book <a href="http://smarterthanyouthink.net/excerpt/">Smarter Than You Think</a> describes how in world championship chess, where AIs surpassed human grandmasters some time ago, the best chess players in the world are not humans or AIs working alone, but human-computer teams.</p>
<p>While I don't believe that surpassing raw (unaided) human intelligence will be the trigger for an apocalypse, it does provide an interesting benchmark. Unfortunately, there is no agreement on how we would know when this point has been reached.</p>
<h2>Beyond the Turing Test</h2>
<p>An established benchmark for AI is the <a href="http://www.iep.utm.edu/art-inte/#SH1b">Turing Test</a>, developed from a thought experiment described by the late, great mathematician and AI pioneer Alan Turing. Turing's practical solution to the question: "Can a machine think?" was <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2084970/">an imitation game</a>, where the challenge is for a machine to converse on any topic sufficiently convincingly that a human cannot tell whether they are communicating with man or machine.</p>
<p>In 1991 the inventor Hugh Loebner instituted an annual competition, the <a href="http://www.loebner.net/Prizef/loebner-prize.html">Loebner Prize</a>, to create an AI – or what we would now call a chatbot – that could pass Turing's test. One of the judges at this year's competition, Ian Hocking, <a href="http://cccupsychology.com/blog/2014/11/17/knock-knock/">reported in his blog</a> that if the competition entrants represent our best shot at human-like intelligence, then success is still decades away; AI can only match the tip of the human intelligence iceberg.</p>
<p>I'm not overly impressed either by the University of Reading's recent claim to have matched the conversational capability of a <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/09/turing-test-eugene-goostman_n_5474457.html">13-year-old Ukrainian boy speaking English</a> Imitating child-like intelligence, and the linguistic capacity of a non-native speaker, falls well short of meeting the full Turing Test requirements.</p>
<p>Indeed, AI systems equipped with pattern-matching, rather than language understanding, algorithms have been able to superficially emulate human conversation for decades. For instance, in the 1960s the <a href="http://www.med-ai.com/models/eliza.html">Eliza</a> program was able to give a passable impression of a psychotherapist.</p>
<p>Eliza showed that you can fool some people some of the time, but the fact that Loebner's US$25,000 prize has never been won demonstrates that, performed correctly, the Turing test is a demanding measure of human-level intelligence.</p>
<h2>Measuring artificial creativity</h2>
<p>So if the Turing test cannot yet be passed, are there aspects of human intelligence that AI can recreate more convincingly? One <a href="http://www.cc.gatech.edu/news/georgia-tech-professor-proposes-alternative-turing-test">recent proposal</a> from <a href="https://research.cc.gatech.edu/inc/mark-riedl">Mark Riedl</a>, at Georgia Tech in the USA, is to test AI's capacity for creativity.</p>
<p>Riedl's <a href="http://www.i-programmer.info/news/105-artificial-intelligence/7999-lovelace-20-test-an-alternative-turing-test.html">Lovelace 2.0</a> test requires the AI to create an artifact matching a plausible, but arbitrarily complex, set of design constraints. The constraints, set by an evaluator who also judges its success, should be chosen so that meeting them would be deemed as evidence of creative thinking in a person, and so by extension in an AI.</p>
<p>For example the evaluator might ask the machine to (as per Riedl's example): "create a story in which a boy falls in love with a girl, aliens abduct the boy and the girl saves the world with the help of a talking cat". A crucial difference from the Turing test is that we are not testing the output of the machine against that of a person.</p>
<p>Creativity, and by implication intelligence, is judged by experts. Riedl suggests we leave aside aesthetics, judging only whether the output meets the constraints. So, if the machine constructs a suitable science fiction tale in which Jack, Jill and <a href="http://www.smallfilms.co.uk/bagpuss/people.htm">Bagpuss</a>, repel ET and save Earth, then that's a pass – even thought the result is somewhat unoriginal as a work of childrens' fiction.</p>
<p>I like the idea of testing creativity – there are talents that underlie human inventiveness that AI developers have not even begun to fathom. But the essence of Riedl's test appears to be constraint satisfaction – problem solving. Challenging, perhaps, but not everyone's idea of creativity. And by dropping the competitive element of Turing's verbal tennis match, judging Lovelace 2.0 is left too much in the eye of the beholder.</p>
<h2>Surprises to come</h2>
<p>Ada Lovelace, the friend of Charles Babbage who had a hand in inventing the computer, and for whom Riedl named his test, famously said that "the Analytical Engine [Babbage's computer] has no pretensions to originate anything. It can do whatever we know how to order it to perform".</p>
<p>This comment reflects a view, still widely held, that the behaviour of computer programs is entirely predictable and that only human intelligence is capable of doing things that are surprising and hence creative.</p>
<p>However, in the past 50 years we have learned that complex computer programs often show "emergent" properties unintended by their creators. So doing something unexpected in the context of Riedl's test may not be enough to indicate original thinking.</p>
<p>Human creativity shows other hallmarks that reflect our ability to discover relationships between ideas, where previously we had seen none. This may happen by translating images into words then back into images, ruminating over ideas for long periods where they are subject to subconscious processes, shuffling thoughts from one person's brain to another's through conversation in a way that can inspire concepts to take on new forms. We are far from being able to do most of these things in AI.</p>
<p>For now I believe AI will be most successful when working alongside humans, combining our ability to think imaginatively with the computer's capacity for memory, precision and speed. Monitoring the progress of AI is worthwhile, but it will be a long time before these tests will demonstrate anything other than how far machine intelligence still has to go before we will have made our match.</p>
<p>All things considered, I don't think we need to hit the panic button just yet.</p>
<p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.edu.au/content/35148/count.gif" border="0" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1"></p>
<p>This article was originally published on <a href="http://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a>. Read the <a href="http://theconversation.com/no-need-to-panic-artificial-intelligence-has-yet-to-create-a-doomsday-machine-35148">original article</a>.</p><p><strong>SEE ALSO:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/ray-kurzweil-thinks-well-have-human-level-ai-by-2029-2014-12" >KURZWEIL: Human-Level AI Is Coming By 2029</a></strong></p>
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